It’s a waste of finance

Sanctuary Housing have been working on a regeneration scheme throughout the Shiregreen Estate.

Part of this involved digging up grass verges, chopping down trees, and repairing footpaths. Great in theory, but not in practice.

I live close to Hartley Brook School and the verges were no more than sludge heaps. Staff, parents and visitors parking on them mainly (but not solely) caused this.

This was not helped by the school designating the gate at the bottom of Gregg House Road as their delivery point, despite the fact it is close to the junction with Hartley Brook Road, on a main bus route, and next to a bus stop.

I have lived here for 40-plus years and have never seen articulated lorries and other vehicles pulling onto the verges and causing traffic difficulties. Perhaps the school should accept some responsibility for the environment around it. I welcomed the regeneration of the verges especially as wooden bollards were being installed on other parts of the estate to stop people parking on them.

Before Christmas a tree outside my house was chopped down, the verge dug up and new topsoil laid. Within two hours people parking on it had churned it into a mudheap. At the moment local verges look like Somme trenches. I accept inclement weather has made it impossible to finish the job and spoke to Sanctuary to ascertain when the job would be completed. I was astonished to be told the verges would be regenerated again, re-seeded, but that wooden bollards would not be installed to stop people parking, due to a lack of money, despite nearby roads being peppered with bollards though being nowhere near a school or shops.

There have long been parking problems around the school resulting in the police being called to incidents between residents and parkers.

Bollards would have gone a long way to stopping some of this.

To add to the problem, Sanctuary saw fit to dig up an area of verge between the pavement crossover outside my home and that of my neighbour and amalgamated the individual crossovers into a large one. Many people visiting the school now use this as a car park.

So, having spent money chopping down trees that deterred parking and digging up verges that have now been ploughed up again, Sanctuary intend to sort out the verges again at more expense.